The Chum runs are better throughout most of our area

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - There are more Chum swimming up Basil Creek than we’ve seen for years. According to Matthew Clarke of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Cortes Island isn’t the only place where the Chum run is good this year. 

“As a general rule this year things are looking much better for Chum than they have looked, albeit with a couple of places that are not quite as strong as we would have hoped to see,”  he explained.

“We are seeing strength like you mentioned on Cortes. We actually saw some Chum in Campbell River, which has been hard for us to really survey for a while. It was nice to see that because we have had that as a question mark. Oyster River has some good Chum numbers in it, and as we move down the island, things are generally good." 

"There are definitely some returns that are better than we have seen in recent years, but we are also seeing some runs that may not come up quite as high as we would like to see. At Orford (which empties into Bute Inlet and has a summer Chum population) we saw a few thousand fish come back, but it wasn't excellent returns relative to what we've seen elsewhere. In adjacent rivers, like the Qualicum, Little Qualicum, and Big Qualicum, one is not showing quite as strong, but the other one is showing reasonable strength."

"As a rule, pretty much throughout the entire south coast area, we've seen poor Chum productivity since about 2017. Some years we did see some slight upticks in abundance. 2019 was  poorest year on record for all south coast Chum stocks and that has tumbling down effects. Chum returns are primarily  3, 4 and 5 year old fish with the 4 year old component typically being the strongest, but that can vary a little bit." 

“Last year the dominant brood year return would have been from 2019, a low abundance year. We saw low abundance pretty much throughout, but with maybe a slight indication that things were improving for Chum. We typically see that four year old component as the most abundant component, but in the test fishery last year, we actually saw the three year olds showing up in really strong numbers. Typically,  four year olds are about 80% of what we would expect to see. Last year,  in the final days of the test fishery, 50% of the run consisted of 3 year old fish."